The foreign trainee and technical internship program was established to help workers from developing nations learn on-the-job skills at Japanese companies and other workplaces. The stated goal is to provide participants with three years of vocational experience before they return to their home countries.
Last week, the labor standards inspection office in Ibaraki Prefecture recognized that the June 2008 death of a 31-year-old Chinese man in Japan on that program was due to karoshi, or death from overwork.
This case exposed the deceitful nature of a system promoted as making “international contributions.”
The trainee in question arrived in Japan in December 2005, and had been employed at a metal processing company in Ibaraki. In the three months prior to his death, he logged between 93 and 109 hours of overtime each month, the office reported. His death is viewed as the tip of the iceberg. There are some 200,000 Chinese and other foreign trainees and interns in Japan. According to the Japan International Training Cooperation Organization, which helps to transfer Japanese skills to developing countries through the training program, 35 guest workers on the program died during fiscal 2008. Of that number, 16 are believed to have succumbed to cerebral and coronary ailments caused by working long hours. In fiscal 2009, there were 27 deaths.
For details, please visit the following website:
http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201007140414.html
(The Asahi Shimbun, July 14, 2010)
